What is Breakdown maintenance? Disadvantages of Breakdown Maintenance, Causes of equipment breakdown.

July 25, 2020May 10, 2023 Sukanta Maiti 8 Comments

Corrective or Breakdown maintenance is one of four types of Maintenance.

In this article, I will cover the definition of breakdown maintenance, causes of breakdown, advantages and, disadvantages of breakdown maintenance.

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What you are going to learn?

What is Breakdown maintenance?

In Corrective or Breakdown maintenance repairs are made after the equipment is out of order and it can not perform its normal function.

In that case, the maintenance department comes into action and makes necessary repairs after checking. They do not attend the equipment until another breakdown occurs.

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What are the causes of equipment breakdown?

Fail to replace worn out parts in timely.
Lack of lubrication leads to wearing out of the movable machine parts.
The neglected cooling system in the factory causes breakdown.
Ignorance toward minor faults can create a breakdown in the future.
voltage put wrong the wrong fuel in the engine, etc causing damage to the equipment.
vibrations, the unusual sound coming out from the rotating machinery, equipment getting too much heated up, etc leads to damage to equipment.

Why Corrective or Breakdown maintenance may be justified for small factories?

In small factories, they do not feel financial justification for employing Scheduling techniques and get seldom demand in excess of normal operating capacity.
In many factories, make-and-mend is the rule rather than the exception.
Sometimes Breakdown maintenance is economical for non-critical equipment, whose downtime, and repair cost are less than using any other type of maintenance.
This type of maintenance involves less administrative work, few records, and small stuff.

Disadvantages of Breakdown Maintenance:

Breakdown happens at an inappropriate time, this leads to a delay in production and poor maintenance. Production delay means a reduction in the output.
Less safety to both workers and machines, the chance of accidents increased.
More spoilt material will be there, which means the manufacturing cost of the product will increase, and it leads to a direct loss of profit.
Breakdown maintenance can not be applicable to that equipment that is regulated by statutory provisions. Example: crane, lift, hoist, and pressure vessels.